Research topic: Drug discovery

Drug discovery is the process by which new medications are discovered. Historically, drugs were discovered through identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery.

Later chemical libraries of synthetic small molecules, natural products or extracts were screened in intact cells or whole organisms to identify substances that have a desirable therapeutic effect in a process known as classical pharmacology.

Since sequencing of the human genome which allowed rapid cloning and synthesis of large quantities of purified proteins, it has become common practice to use high throughput screening of large compounds libraries against isolated biological targets which are hypothesized to be disease modifying in a process known as reverse pharmacology. Hits from these screens are then tested in cells and then in animals for efficacy.

NCMM also has a high-throughput Chemical Biology Screening Platform available for customers that want to discover small molecules to probe, explore and modulate biological systems. The platform is part of the Norwegian Chemical Biology network NOR-OPENSCREEN which is the Norwegian node of EU-OPENSCREEN.